OLED Smartphones - introduction and industry news - Page 78

US carriers will start shipping the GS4 this week. AT&T will probably be the first one as they aim to start shipping on Tuesday (April 23). Most other carriers (including Sprint, T-Mobile and US Cellular) will ship a week layer (April 30). it will be very interesting to see the market's reaction to Samsung's new flagship phone.

The GS4 features a 4.99" Full-HD (1920x1280, 441 PPI) Super AMOLED display, an Octacore 1.6Ghz Exynos CPU (some models use a Quadcore 1.9Ghaz Qualcomm CPU), 2GB of memory, 13 mp camera and a 2,600mAh battery - all this while being a smaller and lighter than the GS3. The GS4 includes a lot of new software features and special UI controls, include the Adapt Display which allows extensive display calibration adjustments.

The OLED Association posted an interesting article today in which they say that Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Note 3 phone (phablet?) will use a YOUM display (a plastic-based unbreakable flexible OLED). Samsung will unveil the new phone at IFA 2013 (September) and will launch it in Q4 2013.

Galaxy Note II

Samsung YOUM displays use a plastic (Polyimide) substrate, an LTPS backplane, direct-emission RGB patterned OLED sub pixels and thin-film encapsulation (using Vitex's multi-layer technology). It's not known yet what the size and resolution of this particular display, but the OLED-A estimates it will be at least 5.9" in size, but probably will not achieve Full-HD resolution. The Note 3 will also not use a curved display.

In January 2013 Blackberry announced their first AMOLED phone, the Q10, with a square 3.2" 720x720 (330 ppi)Super AMOLED display. It seems that the company is ready to launch this new phone soon. Canadian carrier Rogers will reportedly start to sell it on April 30 for $200 on a 3-year contract. UK's Phones4U has begun to take pre-orders (£36 a month on contract or £549.95 unlocked) with shipments expected by the end of April. The Q10 has also passed through the FCC and approved it for a US launch.

Other Q10 features include a hardware keyboard, LTE, 1.5Ghz dual-core CPU and 2GB of RAM. This is Blackberry's first hardware keyboard device to sport the company's new BB10 OS.

DisplaySearch expects the AMOLED market to reach $11.3 billion in 2013, up 60% from 2012 ($6.9 billion). The market is still dominate by a single supplier (Samsung Display) and a single customer (Samsung), and it's still too early to tell whether OLEDs can really become a mainstream market.

DisplaySearch also released the interesting chart above that shows price comparison between AMOLED and LCD (a-Si and LTPS) panels. Most of the growth in 2013 will come from the 4.99" Full-HD (441 PPI) panel used by the GS4, and DisplaySearch estimates that 52 million of these panels will be produced in 2013 (over $3.2 billion in revenues).

The USPTO unveiled a new patent application by Apple, that describes a mobile device that features a wrap-around flexible AMOLED display (yes, the specifically say it's an OLED display). The whole device is wrapped with the display. The patent also describes a mechanism that determines which parts of the display to use using a camera and a facial recognition software. An OLED is obviously the best choice for a full-color, flexible display that can be efficiently turned-off in some areas.

Apple's patent also describes an option to include multiple transparent displays, overlaid on top of one another. I'm not sure I understand the advantages of using several transparent OLEDs one on top of the other (except for the creation of 3D images). The device shown above represents just one of the concept device designs - Apple also describes "regular" rectangle devices and a cylindrical device. According to the patent the phone body may be totally transparent (made entirely of glass, for example).

According to UK Carphone Warehouse, the GS4 is going to be very popular - in the first 3 days of offering pre-orders, there were 446% more pre-registrations than with the GS3 - the most popular Android phone ever. CW's COO says that the S4 "is the one to watch for 2013".

The GS4 features a 4.99" Full-HD (1920x1280, 441 PPI) Super AMOLED display, an Octacore 1.6Ghz Exynos CPU (some models use a Quadcore 1.9Ghz Qualcomm CPU), 2GB of memory, 13 mp camera and a 2,600mAh battery - all this while being a smaller and lighter than the GS3. The GS4 includes a lot of new software features and special UI controls, include the Adapt Display which allows extensive display calibration adjustments.

Raymond Soneira, Displaymate's display guru (and our friend) has previously criticized Samsung for the lack of calibration on their AMOLED displays - the colors are too saturated, the whites are too blue, and the intensity scales are too steep. This is hopefully going to change with the S4 however. Samsung is including a new feature in the S4 called Adapt Display that offers seven automatic modes and four manual modes - to provide the optimal viewing experience.

As Raymond points out, Samsung's own S4 site shows a CIE chromaticity diagram and a gray scale level picker (see screenshot above). This leads Raymond to believe that the S4 will have extensive color, white-point, and display calibration adjustments. This could be a "major display advancement and a win for Samsung and AMOLED displays" - according to Raymond.

Samsung unveiled their new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S4. As expected, it sports a 4.99" Full-HD (1920x1080, 441 PPI) Super AMOLED display behind a Corning Gorilla Glass 3. This phone will launch towards the end of April worldwide (on 327 carriers in 155 countries). The S4 seems to be more of an upgrade to the S3 than a revolutionary new handset.

According to previous reports, Samsung Display started producing these 5" Full-HD AMOLED panels in February at a rate of 3 million units per moth (this will grow to almost 10 million monthly units in coming months). The S3 is Samsung's best selling and fastest selling smartphone, and obviously the company hopes that the S4 will sell even better.

A couple of weeks ago SamMobile reported that according to their sources, the S4 will use an LCD not an AMOLED display. A week later they posted that the S4 will actually use an OLED. Samsung will announce the S4 tomorrow and we'll know for certain, but in the meanwhile the same blog now reports that the Note 3 may use an LCD, according to their sources.

I don't know whether we should regard those SamMobile reports as serious, but they do still create a hype and a lot of sites re-post these articles - so I wanted to post on it as well. According to the new rumor, an insider from Samsung says that the company is still in internal discussions regarding the upcoming display. If they choose an LCD, they might go with the latest ones from Sharp.

Since Samsung unveiled their 4.99" Full-HD AMOLED panels at CES 2013, we assumed that the Galaxy S4 will use those panels. Some supply-chain analysts from Korea confirmed this. But then, towards the end of February, SamMobile posted that the S4 will in fact not use an OLED at all, but rather a 4.99" Full-HD SoLux LCD display.

Today the same blog posted a new post saying that they received new information about the S4 - and indeed it will use a new kind of AMOLED display - one with green PHOLEDs (instead of the fluorescent green currently used by Samsung) - which will make it 25% more efficient. This isn't really news - it was expected and we reported this back in early February. But it's good to see this new post by SamMobile anyway.